After seeing a few Youtube videos taken offline from my favorites (some of them vocaloid videoes) I thought I'd ask. Suppose you're a small garage band or an independent musician who's putting up their songs on Youtube for free and for fun. Or you're using a program that allows you to make songs to create your content and you're releasing it for others to enjoy. If some big company or organization (such as the R.I.A.A.) starts asking the hosting company for your content to take it down because they apparently own that content, can you fight back? Can they even claim ownership of the stuff you created?

heh… I know… silly question. And I'm under the impression that a lot of “Vocaloid” songs are originals made for fun (I could be wrong though)…

Those videos I have no idea about but it maybe that they used things lifted from other songs.

A friend of mine is a musician and did a punt for an advert for a large jeans company. They rejected it yet when the advert was put out it had his music on it. He sought legal advice but was strongly advised against trying to take them on as chances of success were remote. The reason being that being a punt it was requested, recorded and submitted very quickly meaning that proving copyright would be difficult.

I guess it's the same argument as with companies opposed to you doing parodies of their work. If they know you can't afford a lawyer to defend you they'll do what they want and take what they want from you…

Anyone can take your songs if you don't protect them properly. That is why it is important to be official about copyrighting all of your work. A lot of times you can't even copyright an idea in the form of a script, just the execution. You better believe that stuff like this happens a lot.

But on the other side of the coin, there's a lot of people out there with shoddy material who just claim that their work was stolen.

Actually, protecting a script is pretty easy, and due to the channels you go through to do so, it is often easier to take legal action if needed. That's why people around here have a tendency to register their scripts.

I'm confused. Are you talking about people making covers and remixes or making their own original songs? As far as covers and remixes go, it's sketchy. You can claim fair use, but ultimately fair use laws are extremely vague and it depends on just how much your version is changed from the original as well as how liberal the judge who decides is in terms of copyright.

YouTube absolutely refuses to acknowledge fair use, though. They basically take down anything that a company claims is a copyright violation whether or not it actually counts fair use. You can't really do anything to fight back on YouTube, but you can move your videos to your own site. I sincerely doubt the companies would do quite as much to harass you unless it was a clear copyright violation and they knew they could take you to court.

As for your own original content, big companies have absolutely no right to take these down. I believe YouTube recently added the ability to combat copyright violation claims where you could definitely use this. I sincerely doubt the companies will actually make a huge case out of it if it really is your original content.

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